Early Voting using AVTS - Shelby County, TN

Here is a general summary for the Shelby County Primary Election on May 7th, 2002. Shelby County used 133 new R-4 AVTS units for Early Voting. They started on April 17th in the Election Office with 7 units. Then on April 26th, they added their other 18 sites, with 7 units each. They finished Early Voting on May 2nd.

They had 9 units that had problems during the Early Voting Process. There were 3 units that would not release the Voter Card after voting. It looks like 1 of the Card Readers has been installed too tight because when you insert a card there is friction when inserting the card and then when it ejects, it simply stays in the card reader, you then have to pull on the card while rebooting the system in order to get the card out. There are 2 other units that have no friction problem, but it looks like the card reader needs the spring or whatever ejects the card to be tightened/strengthened, because the card reader does not eject the card far enough out of the reader, and then the card is stuck in the reader, then having to pull on the card while rebooting the system. There are 3 units that do a continuous boot, when starting the system. Once I inserted a PCMCIA card the continuous boot stopped, however the poll workers did not remove the PCMCIA card and reinsert it, which might have resolved the problem. There are 2 units that went completely blank, and will not boot up. There is 1 unit that boots, but the screen is a rainbow of colors and cannot be seen.

Obviously all of these units will be shipped back to McKinney for repair and maintenance. I just wanted to give everyone that will be using AVTS units in the future, a heads up of possible problems you may encounter. Also, this represents about a 7% failure rate. Is there anything that the manufacturing plant can do to improve these problems. If we install 19,000 units in Georgia, then we are looking at having to repair over 1300 units after their first election.